


Never stay behind (or he'll always be ahead)

by viridianova



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aomine is a jerk, Cooking Kagami, M/M, School Festivals, maid outfits, touou!kagami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianova/pseuds/viridianova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagami goes to Touou, and unfortunately for him, it's school festival season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never stay behind (or he'll always be ahead)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to both troisroyaumes and readerofasaph for betaing, and to readerofasaph for organizing Divergence week! ♥

The banner over the entrance read "Touou Gakuen School Festival." To Kagami Taiga, however, it might as well have read "Your Personal Hell". That had more to do with the people _attending_ the event though, than with the event itself. It wasn't like the school board had planned this all out specifically to humiliate or enrage him. And he couldn't blame anyone but himself for not requesting to transfer out of class 1-D immediately after the start of the school year.

Not that anyone would've really wanted to understand why he wanted so badly to avoid the class that he'd so conveniently been put into with his teammates. It wasn't easy to explain that one of your classmates was really more of a rival. Or more than that, that the "Ace of the Generation of Miracles", Aomine Daiki, was just a self-important dick who skipped practice all the time. Everyone at Touou was still too taken up with how he played on the court, with his amazing effortless plays that he managed to make without ever practicing. Even his other teammates didn't seem to mind what he did because he had such a massive impact on their performance on the court.

 _This_ was the guy he had to put up with for the entire school festival. Someone who normally never cared about anything like group morale— only when he could make other people's lives more difficult.

Aomine was ridiculously popular with the girls in their class, too— not just the people who cared how the basketball team performed. Kagami didn't even understand why they were so into him since that Momoi chick was always hanging off him. Kagami didn't think they were really dating (it was hard to think that if you ever saw them interact for more than five minutes at a time), but he always assumed there was some sort of girl code that involved Not Encroaching on Other Girls' Territory.

Maybe he shouldn't have watched all those movies that Alex had forced him to watch, after all. 

All of the girls loved every single one of Aomine's ideas for their school booth, though. The amount of preparation had been overwhelming; the whole classroom had been filled up with the various materials required. Kagami had planned to skip out completely, since his parents weren't around and it wasn't like he had anyone else in his life to impress— or who would even be impressed by a school festival. But since nothing seemed to go Kagami Taiga's way at Touou Gakuen, two things happened.

One. Imayoshi cornered him one day after practice, about two weeks before the school festival, and had given him one of his so very trustworthy smiles before asking why, exactly, Kagami had not appeared on the list for Class 1-D's booth at the school festival.

Never mind that Imayoshi was a third year, and theoretically busy enough that he shouldn't have the time to stalk the other people on his basketball team, but apparently Kagami was considered a VIP, and this was a matter of team "publicity".

He was tempted to ask why it was, if he was such a VIP, that he wasn't consistently a starter on the team. But Kagami knew better than to open his mouth, especially since Imayoshi had bothered to make full eye contact while he was talking to him this time.

And two. About three days after that, Momoi had come up to him with tears in her eyes and told him that Imayoshi had threatened to kick Aomine (or Dai-chan, as she called him) off the team if Kagami wouldn't participate in the school festival.

The problem was that Momoi knew (and so did Imayoshi) that Kagami had a bit of an complex around being seen in front of crying girls, even if he had nothing to do with said crying, because everyone always assumed it was his fault.

So he said he'd do it, and signed up the next day. The class president had looked delighted when he'd written his name down, saying that she was really glad that more of the boys in the class were attending.

Maybe he should have looked a little more closely at the sheet he'd signed up for, though. He'd been a little distracted by the impending threat of either Momoi's tears or Imayoshi's leers for the rest of his high school career. He hadn't thought too much of the whole thing though, since the class president had told him to just show up on the morning of, and to keep an eye out for something in the mail.

Maybe that should've been his first sign of suspicion, since mail couldn't come within a day.

But he hadn't thought of it too much in the days leading up to it, and it was only when he found the package shoved into his home mailbox that he even remembered what the class president had said. He opened it, and for a second he thought it had been sent to him by mistake.

Inside the package was a maid costume, and Kagami didn't even have to guess who had sent it to him. He sent an angry SMS off to Aomine immediately—

`Aomine if you don't reply in five minutes then I am going to come to your parents' house and rip down your door`

But somehow, this time, Aomine actually responded to his (most likely empty) threat. He got the return text only two minutes later (which for Aomine, was really more like lightning fast), which only read, `Got your uniform for tomorrow? ☆〜（ゝ。∂）` He couldn't believe that he'd used one of those stupid faces that Kise loved so much . (He didn't even get why Aomine _talked_ to Kise, honestly— or why anyone in that group did, since they really didn't seem to like each other all that much. Or at least, as far as he could tell.)

But the rest of Aomine's middle school friends weren't important when the entirety of Kagami's dignity was on the line. He just called Aomine's cell instead.

"You're an ass," he said, but it came out exhausted instead of angry like he wanted it to.

"The form said what you'd be doing. You're good at cooking 'cause you live alone, right? That's all you're gonna be doing. Ryou signed up too— so don't worry too much about it, _Taiga_."

Kagami really hated when Aomine called him by his name like that— only Himuro and Alex were really allowed to. "I'm going to be cooking in a maid uniform." 

"Yeah, like I said, so is Ryou." And then, of course, that asshole hung up on him.

* * *

He hadn't changed into his uniform yet. He was still stuck at the school gates, although at least he had gotten there early enough to have some time to stall. And by stall he really just meant, stare at the gate intently and hope that some gate troll would come attack him so he could bail on this entire festival and not have to worry about wearing a stupid _maid dress_. It suited Sakurai way more than it suited him, so why did they _both_ have to do it?

He was snapped out of his reverie (or overactive imagination) by—

"Kagami-kun?" A girl's voice.

He turned around slowly, because he knew that was Momoi's voice and that almost always meant that Aomine was there too. 

This time, though, she was alone. 

"Uh— where's Aomine?" 

She just gave him a smile. "He won't come until five minutes before the festival actually opens."

"But—"

"I know what you're going to say. Do you really think he'll treat a cultural festival more seriously than basketball games? You know how late he is for those." She giggled, and Kagami didn't even want to ask her what was so funny. "Don't worry though. He won't skip out on you, Kagami-kun."

She didn't even ask him if he was coming in— she just breezed past and through the gate of Kagami's prison for the day.

It was only natural that he would follow.

* * *

The festival itself was already a zoo, and it hadn't even started yet. Kagami had thought he could avoid some of the madness by coming in early, but that turned out to be so incorrect that he almost wanted to crack up. Anyone who took the school festival seriously had already shown up. Momoi picked up on the fact that he had been hesitating a little behind her, and dragged him by the hand all the way to their classroom, where the girls were already starting to set everything up.

They lit up when Kagami came into the room. Sakurai wasn't there yet, though, so there was absolutely nothing between him and the swarm of his eager female classmates.

"Ah! Kagami-kun, you made it!" the class president said, leaping towards him and grabbing the duffel out of his hand so that he couldn't try to hold the maid costume hostage. They knew him— or they thought they did, and in their minds, Kagami-kun would never have taken kindly to this whole situation.

The secretary stepped in to hand him the recipe list for the school festival.

"Ah, sorry, but Sakurai-kun already approved everything on the menu. We weren't sure if you were as good at making bento as he is, but..."

Kagami just sighed as he read through the menu. This was definitely the kind of stuff that Sakurai was good at making, the stuff that required fine motor work like piping messages onto omurice or cutting up sausages so that they looked like octopi. Kagami's cooking, on the other hand, only had two requirements: that it could be made in bulk and still taste good. But here there was at least stuff he could do, as long as he left all of the decorational bullshit to Sakurai. As far as he knew, Sakurai actually liked doing that stuff anyways.  
"Just one question. We aren't serving, right?"

"No, you really will just be cooking, I promise!" A third girl was the one talking this time— Kagami wasn't even sure who she was.

"Then why do we need the costumes?"

"Because it was Aomine-kun's idea!"

That was enough to make Kagami sputter— not to mention the idea of Aomine thinking about this, which was weird. "Is he the president or something now?!"

"Well, no, but..."

Looking at their besotted faces, Kagami decided that he really didn't want to know.

* * *

Aomine showed up half an hour after the school festival's official start time. Kagami had already changed— much to the delight of the girls of the class. Aomine just smirked.

"Hey, _Taiga_." He was doing all of this deliberately, and Kagami really hated the fact that he was calling him by his first name in front of the girls of his class now too. Didn't he know how weird it would seem? They'd think the two of them were close.

"Nice dress." Aomine laughed and gave him something of a leer, but Kagami knew that was just because Aomine had wanted to see how people react to him being dressed like this.

Sakurai was standing right next to him, but he looked more afraid that Aomine would say something weird to him, too.

Kagami clapped Sakurai on the shoulder— enough to induce a bit of a yelp.

"Don't worry about him, it's not like he's gonna stick around, anyways. You wanna start preparing?"

"S- sorry!" Sakurai shrieked, which was enough to make Kagami step away. He didn't want the girls to think he bullied Sakurai like Aomine did. The two of them were basically in the same boat, after all. The only difference was that Kagami and Aomine were mistaken as friends more often.

He decided that he didn't really care if the girls thought if he was bullying Sakurai too much, and dragged him (gently) to the place that the girls had designated as their "kitchen". This consisted of one of those stupid camp grills and a cutting board, but really, as long as he had a little bit of space, it didn't matter. Here he was in his element, and it would be way easier to get these ingredients put together with a helping hand.

"Oi, Sakurai, start chopping those carrots, okay? Don't worry about being too neat."

And with that, he started chopping the rest of the vegetables up, and also mixing up eggs, and all the other stuff. He and Sakurai actually got into a decent rhythm of it fairly quickly.

It helped that Aomine had fucked off to go do something else for a while, because his presence made both of them more nervous. When the girls announced that the cafe was officially open, both Kagami and Sakurai breathed a sigh of relief, because the hardest part was over now.

The problem was, that Aomine knew that they'd open at eleven, so he was the very first in line for a table at the cafe. A bunch of the girls had gotten into costume too (dressed as maids also, although of course the girls actually looked normal in it as opposed to Kagami or Sakurai), and two of them had escorted Aomine to his seat and were now hovering around him, waiting to see what he wanted.

He just smiled at them. "I want Kagami to serve me the omurice. Okay?" He said it like he somehow didn't know that Kagami was in the same room as him, was in fact right on the other side of a dinky makeshift counter.

Before the girl could even say anything, Kagami had already interjected, "No way, they told me I just had to stand behind here the whole time and cook!"

Aomine snorted at him. "Aaah, that's no fun, though. Ryou's better at the stuff that's left anyways, right?"

Aomine had him there. He wasn't even entirely sure how Aomine managed to know that much about what they were good or bad at when it came to cooking.

The girls were starting to look over— and other customers. With a late opening booth like theirs, obviously there would be more of a commotion right at the start. And of course Aomine would try to take advantage of that fact, by making it so that Kagami would look way worse for causing a scene than anyone else. After all, people would pay good money _just_ to see Kagami in a skirt. Even if he wasn't usually a first string player, he still stood out at school. He was utterly stuck— and now he'd probably be stuck serving for the rest of the day, too. 

"You're a dick," he said, and this time he did sound properly angry. That didn't keep him from plating the omelette for Aomine, though, or even from letting Sakurai pipe the stupid ketchup hearts on to the finished product.

He could feel the whole room watching him as he walked over to Aomine's seat— or maybe that was just the skirt making him self-conscious. He got the plate in front of Aomine successfully, without anything even spilling, but when he turned away, Aomine grabbed his hand.

Of course this wouldn't be over so quickly.

"Oi, Taiga, you forgot something."

Kagami just glared, as the rest of the class held their breath. Aomine tapped his cheek.

"Gimme a kiss."

Kagami was tempted to deck him in the face instead of kiss him, but Aomine had him in a bind. There were teachers around, for one, and this _was_ supposed to be a maid cafe. This was part of the role, probably. Everyone in the room certainly seemed to expect him to follow through.

He leaned down, as Aomine kept his head tilted toward him, challenging him to do something so scandalous.

At the last moment, he kissed Aomine on the mouth instead.


End file.
